Content We Love: The Brand as Publisher

As I was interviewing Anthony Hardman of SecureState for yesterday’s blog post about newsjacking, I asked him whether chip and pin technology that is present in Europe would solve the credit card fraud problems we’ve seen in the US lately. He replied, “Funny you ask, I just wrote a 1,000-word blog post on that very topic – I’ll send you the link.”

Credit card security is top of mind for me. Earlier this week, I spotted some funky looking charges that turned out to be fraudulent. If, in fact, I accurately represent the audience of people who are concerned about their credit cards after shopping at compromised retailers and are thinking long and hard about credit card security, Hardman did a great job in anticipating my concerns and the sort of questions I’d be asking. A former journalist, he’s now applying his news nose to his company’s content creation strategy. What he sent me wasn’t just a blog post-it was brand journalism.

Now why would anyone use a channel like news release distribution to promote owned media when in fact so many other channels exist? After all, we have our brand websites and blogs, social media channels, industry groups and online forums – the list of channels with which we can reach our audiences goes on an on.

“People are reading news releases, and Google is indexing them. Our second leading source of referral traffic for our web site is from PR Newswire press releases,” Hardman noted during our chat yesterday. “We’re using them to promote our content. We’re targeting readers.”

Hardman told me that the press releases his organization issued have become the second-largest referrer of traffic to their web site and, behind search engines, which means that the readers the company is targeting are finding their messages. What’s more, the visitors referred by press releases are also making the leap from reader to qualified leads.

SecureState is using its content strategy to augment its PR efforts, and in effect is acting as a publisher. The news releases are surfacing the editorial content the company has created. They’re earning attention and credibility for their own messages by communicating in a timely and direct way with their own audiences. It’s an interesting and effective strategy for amplifying the visibility of the brand’s messages.

Get some new ideas for your PR & content strategies for the coming year: join us next week for a free webinar titled “Newsworthiness: New Context & Opportunities for PR,” on January 23. The very definition of “news” is changing, and this evolution creates the opportunity for PR & content marketing pros to create timely content that earns credibility, earns media and generates ongoing (and relevant) visibility for the brand. Taking pages from the journalistic and content marketing playbooks, this webinar will include a discussion on the evolution of news, how to map the resources within your own organization and ways to identify different opportunities a responsive communications department can capitalize upon.